“Not an unfair picture of what went on”: Mark Twain and The Private History of a Campaign That Failed

This paper is an effort to locate Mark Twain in the “senseless tragedy” of the Civil War; to locate him in "The Private History of A Campaign That Failed".
This paper is an attempt, however brief, to consider Twain’s "The Private History of A Campaign That Failed" as evidence of Twain’s self-forgiveness, as evidence of his reconciliation of his actions in the war and his, and a nation’s, memory of the war.
This paper presumes the autobiographical character of "The Private History of A Campaign That Failed". As such, it is dependent on the text of the story to support points made.